A Window into a Parent's Life and The Problem With Gratitude

This blog post consists of two parts: The first part is a window and snippet into the life of a parent . The second part is a philosophical contemplation on the idea of gratitude. 

This morning, as I was driving my son to school, I managed to have a discussion with him about a question of spiritual matter. In such moments, I feel my life finding its zenith in terms of significance. It is as if, all my accumulated experiences in life, many of which difficult and painful, takes on a different shine under the light of parental love. Some sort of a transmutation occurs, and one’s own life experience, now food for the youthful soul, changes into spiritual treasures of immense worth. One feels his soul elevate and his purpose in life coming into clearer focus…

This morning, the spiritual discussion went as follows. My son told me that he had a mix feelings of love and hate for his teacher, and he did not know what to do about it. I asked him why, and he told me it was because his teacher punishes him physically. I told him, it was not wrong for him to think that his teacher was doing something wrong, but that perhaps he has to find way to free himself from the hate. He asked me how, and I told him that he could take aim and vanquish the spirit of hate with the positron cannon gun of forgiveness, a reference to his favorite Japanese anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Taking the metaphor further, I told him that he had to charge the cannon first with the spirit of humility. That he first has to see that he was in desperate need of forgiveness himself. He asked me how was it possible for him to see that he needed forgiveness, and I told him to pray to God to reveal his sins to him. I also told him that in life, most of wait for others to ask for forgiveness before firing the gun of forgiveness, but there was no need for that, one can squeeze the trigger long before that.

As we were finishing up the discussion, an insight occurred to me… I told my son, just as we were pulling up to the school that besides the positron cannon gun of forgiveness, there was another super weapon he has at his disposal, that he can use in his spiritual battles at school. He got intrigued and ask what was it? I told him that it was a most super powerful ‘quark gluon’ rifle, but that I could only reveal the details tomorrow, teasing him a bit to bait his interest.

“What is this rifle dad?”, he took the bait, he needed to have the answer now.

“It’s the quark-gluon rifle of gratitude, or in simpler words, the rifle of saying thank you, we’ll talk more about it tomorrow”, I replied in a tone which suggest that I am someone with special insights into the mysteries and secrets of spiritual life adding a bit of dramatic effect to end the conversation in a cliffhanger.

However, after my son alighted and waved goodbye to me, doubt started to pop into my mind. I started to feel vaguely uneasy and felt a certain lack of clarity with myself, a spiritual impotence if you will. Why is this simple phrase ‘thank you’ a spiritual weapon of immense power? Can I clarify it for myself further? I felt that I may have mentioned the word to my son because I have encountered it many times in my reading of the Church Father and also in the past within self-help literatures, but have little Christian experience with the word. At office, I decided that I would write something about gratitude, in order to gain clarity for myself.   

So here’s the second part of blog, an investigation into gratitude. Gratitude, why did the idea rings hollow and sounded banal in in my soul today? Unable to generate any stirrings in the heart nor bring calm or joy to it. Perhaps today, the grace of God is lacking in me and that I am stuck in a worldly way seeing things. A way of seeing that belongs to the past, a past without God or hope.

So what is this past way of seeing gratitude? Let us investigate…

In the past, I was steeped in all things self-help, and used to practice something called gratitude journaling whereby everyday I would write down things for which I am grateful for. This practice while able to generate some positivity within myself initially, ultimately withered into nothingness within a few short months. Like the barren fig in the Gospel, the practice looked good from afar but was unable to bear true fruits. So what was the gist of what I wrote down in the past? Why did it petered out? In reviewing my past journal, I see that there are things which I wrote down that are perhaps things that I’ll still write down today

• Being blessed with a family

 There were also things which I perhaps won’t write down today that are worldly in nature:

•  Silicon Valley: For the abundance of technological innovation that made the world what it is today

So given that there are things which I should be grateful for even now, why did my practice stopped? As I reviewed the things I wrote, an answer came to my mind. It was because I didn’t know to whom was I ultimately being grateful to and what exactly was it that I am grateful about. The whole exercise, I recall now, felt rather muddled up in my soul, and if I tried to force clarity upon myself, it starts to become contrived and dead.

For example, was I being grateful to the random manifestations of an uncaring universe when I wrote down that I was grateful to have a family? Was I being grateful to my own self (what a spiritual burden that is). Was I being grateful to my wife who did me a turn of favor by marrying me? (I could insist myself to say so, it would faintly be true, but would also ring hollow somehow…) Besides, am I really grateful to have a family? All things in the world seemed to be a mix of good and bad, everything seemed to be corrupted by the touch and stench of death. Sure, a family gives us joy, but it also gives us sorrow and even if we have the best family we could ever hope for, wouldn’t they die one day? Can I unequivocally say I am grateful. No, not really at the time, my soul knew it was dealing with something counterfeit. So what was it I was being grateful for, I guess I didn’t really know at the time, or knew it dimly.

So what is the remedy here? 

How do we activate this quark gluon gun of gratitude that everyone says is important, and which I told my son will help him in his battles with the demons ? From a conceptual standpoint, it is perhaps not difficult to state the 'right' Christian answer. We are to be grateful to God, and for the following things He has done for us:

• The fact He created us high above all created thing
• His love for us as his children and His sacrifice on the cross for our salvation
• The spiritual gifts that He showers to those who are willing to receive them in faith and humility 

Yet, this conceptual scheme, while easy to state and comprehend, is hard to experience as a lived Truth and thus hard to believe in the reality of our being.  But believe we must, for the alternative is to have an empty life which is bereft of meaning, hope, which we can't be thankful for, not in the least. 

So what to do ?

Do we commit intellectual suicide here so this reality can become accessible to us ? How do we respond to Nietzsche's Super Atheist, the Ubermensch, which criticizes us, 'Stop with your delusions... Accept the harshness that life is arbitrary,  forge your meaning for yourself henceforth'  Do we defend ourselves by parading a host of logical arguments which prove the inconvertible fact that Christ in fact existed, was crucified and has risen? Some type of first principle arguments which we can link up proposition by proposition, into some sort of an intellectual chainmail that could withstand the heavy blows from the Spirit of Rationality. Somehow, the soul, when it can be honest to itself, quavers at the thought of such a defense, 

"This is a fools work, hopeless... A house of card, which shatters our belief and our peace at the first contact", it seem to say.

So what is the answer ? 

Our Good Lord and the Church Fathers, they teach us another way, a way rooted in the direct perception of Truth via the heart and not through the mind. “Blessed art those who are pure in heart, for they can see God”, says our Savior. Maybe we can only really possess this truth, this un-counterfeited gratitude if we are able to see God. To see Him after we have successfully purified and conquered the unruly impulses of the heart to chase after the empty things of this life, the vainglories, the fleeting and momentary sensual pleasure, the notion that we are our own true Gods. 

Personally, in the briefest of moments, when the concerns of worldly life recede a bit into the background a bit, I am able to see faintly that what the Holy Scriptures say is in fact true. These moments of clarity, they occur to me in the small mundane everyday happenings. For example, on Wednesday, I found myself experiencing a small measure of joy when I was able to look past my own impatience when queuing at the Auntie Anne’s stall at KLCC to become dimly aware of the humanity of the girl who was serving me behind the counter. It was as if my heart could ‘see’ faintly that the being standing in front of me was a creation of immense worth, worth more than perhaps the sum total of all things non-human in the entire universe, the stars, the supernovas etc..  It occur to me that being able to thank this being, it was not something trivial, but an act, if done properly, imbued with divine significance. 

If only now, my heart could put aside its sinful, prodigal ways, to see this fact clearer, more often, perhaps it would be able to peer beyond the veil of the vain pursuits of life, and see into the wonder and abundance of True Life, the one which God intended for us to experience. If we can see it, then we can be grateful, we can have non-counterfeit gratitude. 

Will stop now as I've been spending a bit too much time writing and editing this, may God bless you the reader.

 

P/S: I wrote the above post on Wednesday, and it prepared me for my follow-up conversation with my son on the following day. That morning, I shared with him an instructive version of the musings above. I told him that he needed to go through a 3-step activation process to use the full power of the quark gluon gun. I told him that most of us are given this gun, but without an instruction manual, and as a result, normally all we can muster is a weak spluttering of plasma. 

So, how to activate the gun ?

The first step, I told him, was to ‘see’ that his teacher was a significant creation of God, in fact the most significant creation of God besides other human beings. More worthwhile than all the stars, and the supernovas are like cosmic firecrackers going off to celebrate our existence, that we are in fact centers of the universe (borrowing from Solzhenitsyn). His response here was to tell me that he got a tingling sensation when he hears this and that he believe the worst thing one can do to another human is to not call him a human. (He struck upon the evils of de-humanization)

As for the second step, I started by telling him that human beings are significant because we can do something not of the universe, something beyond it, the creation of goodness. I told him that the second step consist of paying attention and trying to ‘see’ the goodness in others. A goodness that is not easy to see for it has been shattered by the fall and exist as fragmentary pieces mixed in with a slurry of bad things. To this, his responded that he get’s it and added that goodness (love) is not of the world because while there is a finite energy budget in the universe, there is no finite budget in the unive3rse when it comes to love. I felt this insights of his to be non-trivial, the way he juxtaposed physics and metaphysics, it strikes through to the heart of the matter. I told him that I would not have been able to think up such a succinct metaphor in all my life and thanked him for it.

Finally, as the last step, I told him that he needed to ‘see’ the sacrifice his teacher has to make in order to bring him this fragmentary goodness to him. He concurred with this and added his own final summary on the matter.

“These guns, while it appears we are firing at others, in fact we are firing at the demons inside of ourselves. Others are like a reflector for us”, he said.

Afterwards, an idea for a next discussion emerged between us. How can we help others to remove the slurry of badness and glue back again their fragmented goodness. We decided to pursue in another day. Before he alighted from the car, he said to me in a soft voice, “thank you dad..” Firing his gun of gratitude at me. It gave me a glimmer of hope that life is indeed something to be infinitely grateful for.

A Not Very Typical Weekend or Crossing an Ocean

Last weekend, a series of significant experiences happened to me, one of which led to the writing of the blog post below this one. It was as if I crossed the equivalent of a spiritual ocean and now find myself aground in another continent. Funny how one can travel a long distance and not actually move at all physically..  A new life awaits on this side of the ocean perhaps.. one a bit brighter and more hopeful, one shimmering with the gentle lights of divine love/grace (Or perhaps I will be swept back to the other side of the shore)

The account of a not so typical weekend:

On Friday, something bad by worldly standards happened to me. I botched up a piece of work at the office, got humiliated by the subsequent repercussions, and went home that late afternoon with a bad feeling in my heart and a sense of loss in my soul. 

 

That late night, the wound in my soul stirred and I awoke with some spiritual sentiments forming within me. These sentiments, they have become more regular in recent weeks and often provide comfort and healing to my soul. Perhaps this is only possible because I have started to learn how to turn to God for solace when bad things happen. That night, as I lie on my bed with my wife beside me, my heart revealed to me that I had a lot of pride bottled up within me, and it was this pride in me that caused me to botch up the work. I finally understood experientially what pride is, and how it is different from vainglory. Pride is when you want to see yourself as better and more elevated than others and vainglory (desperate glory) is the desperate attempt to find evidence in the world that this is the case. I understood, in a non intellectual way, how I was desperately currying for evidence that I was good/better than others, and because of this, I had no room left in my heart for others, I couldn't love and thus I couldn't do the work properly. The past experiences of the week of struggling desparately/vainly and fruitlessly now came into clear view within my mind's eye, and my sins laid clearly before me. Tears flowed (I think)..  

 

On Saturday mornings, I went to Church as there was a service and because I needed to go there to heal my wounded soul. Initially, I only planned to stay a short while, owing to the fact I promised my wife to be back by 9:30 am. But as I was about to leave, I felt something like a twitch in my heart, followed by a small searing sensation coursing through a nerve within it. It made me stop. It was as if my heart was telling me to wait. I didn’t know for what, but later something significant happened, I was asked by Noah, the priest assistant to help with administering the Eucharist. To hold the red cloth over which a communicant rests his/her chin to open his/her mouth to receive the Blood and Body of Christ.

 

In that position I had a clear side view of the communicant face coming near to the Golden Chalice. Something about this image, along with the fact that I could see a hidden icon tucked away in the side wall, struck an emotional chord in my heart. The sight of a slightly worn out and weathered human face opening it's mouth to receive the perfectly glistening golden spoon, it sent tears streaming down my cheeks. “This is the magnificence of Christ love for human being. See how He deigns to enters the manger of our broken soul and body”, my heart seems to tell me. Vain thoughts however immediately followed as to whether others are noticing that I'm having a spiritual experience. I try to fight them off but failed and lost my peace of heart in a cloud of self conscious thoughts.

 

After the Eucharist was performed, Father gave a sermon which spoke to me again. He said that we are to read the Akathist of the Most Holy Theotokos Mary whenever we needed help against spiritual attack. This was the thing I needed to ward off the magpies of self seeking thoughts which constantly picked away at the spiritual fruits that were growing within the garden of my soul. I resolved to read the Akathist regularly the following week and soon I was feeling quite well again. I felt comforted by God, and at some point during the day I gained a glimpse of what it meant when Christ said “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. All that trouble on Friday, it has resulted in me gaining so much more in return. I felt that life, here on earth now, it has this perfection already in it, everything is perfect, be it the bad things, the persecution, they are in fact the best thing, and you can know the reality of this perfection, the kingdom, if only you endured your experience with faith and humility..

 

During the rest of the morning after going home, I had to do some research work for an education related project that I have undertaken as a spiritual podvig. I has to also do the run-of-mill errands of fetching my son to swimming class and having breakfast and going shopping with my wife. In all these, I felt a descending of peace into my soul, I didn’t feel I am burdened by the world or that I was a burden to it. I was happy, and could treat everyone around me well, I had an excess of good will to give. At a lunch event with my parents, I felt a stirring in me. In my heart, a spirit of forgiveness manifest and extended out to my mom, and I could put my hand on her shoulder to send her a gesture of love. I sense that she feels it and I hope now I can love her in a different way now… different from the way I treated her my entire of life. 

 

Something is healing… I was given an experiential understanding of the power of forgiving, of to be forgiven by others and by God. To forgive others, it has the power to save and redeem souls. And if we forgive, God save our souls by forgiving us. 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us', say's the Lord's Prayer. How simple life is…  

 

In the afternoon however, I was tempted again, images of possible worldly humiliation (at work) troubled me, and in that state I lost temper at my son for causing me to be late to fetch him to his tuition class. After that I acknowledge the sin and wrote it down as something I needed to repent of. My mood improved markedly when I went to fetch my son later and apologize to him. After that I went to do some shopping with my wife, I had to purchase items for Holy Unction. Here I struggled and succeeded in giving up money for God. I bought the ‘impractically’ expensive wine, olive oil and rice. Later when I talked to my son about this 'feat', he said I shouldn't make too much out of it, as I cannot win God's favor by so cheaply a method. While he missed the point a bit of what the struggle was about, I find that he's the closest I have to a spiritual brethren. Age prove no barrier to us here and may God guide him to see clearly his faults just as much he can see mine.  

 

At the All Night Vigil service, nothing strange or significant struck me at first, I guess generally my soul was at peace, I was calm, God’s grace abide in me, but not intensely. But mid-way, something happened, I was called up to the alter to help Noah read. For some reason, I could read much faster than I normally could, something about my mind was awake in a way in hadn’t in a long time… After the reading, I was assailed and assaulted by the spirit of pride and vainglory again, Tempting thoughts suggest to me that I’m now a parishioner of a different stature at church, a proto-saint perhaps. When I saw Matushka talked to one of the parishioners, I feared that she was asking him instead of me to read, and thus stripping me of my extra special status. Disdain for others crept in, I try to fight these instinct and am reminded how much more in this life I will have to continue to fight for my salvation against the passions.

 

After service, things were calm in my soul, and I drove back in a very calm mood, even though I will be a bit late for dinner with my brother and parents. At dinner, my heart was in a state of openness and it allowed the conversation around the table to flowed in a way which rarely happens when my elder brother is not around. We talked about a number of things, and soon discussion became rather spiritual. My dad, a man of small stature and hunched over, mention to me and my younger brother that his understanding of life is that it is fundamentally an act of service to others. In the past, I tend to brush off whatever he says, but in the last 2 years, I have tried to be more patient in listening to him. His saying, they so happened coincide with what Elder Thaddeus mentioned in the book “Our Thoughts Determine Our Feelings” and resonated with me. My younger brother, he opened up too, and he talked about some of his challenges growing up. In the evening, I sent two Whatsapp message to my brother and father. I told my father that I would like to thank him for his and my mom’s service to us, that I am sorry for all the rebellion and offense I caused them and that I hope we had years still to love and serve each other. To my younger brother, I confessed that my own insecurities may have harmed him while we growing up. I told him that I was essentially a person who, while smart, had very low EQ and a big EGO. I told him that subconsciously I had an urge to prove that I'm smart because I couldn’t get along with others and had to justify it with the fact I’m too good for their friendship.  

 

All these speech from the heart, I wonder if they make me a burden to be around. But in my heart, I also feel I have crossed another milestone which I never thought I could. Even though it’s just on Whatsapp, I have told my parents that I love them, indirectly. I thought I could only express such sentiments at their eulogy. I finished my prayers that night (2 hours) and went to sleep around 1 AM.

 

On Sundays, I awoke early, around 5 AM and had some time till having to rouse my son for church. After my morning prayer, an inspiration took hold of me and I wrote out the confession (blog post below) which I had promised my high school friends was coming. I have severed my relationship with my high school friends for about 10 years, and we had reconciled like a month ago (?). I promised them that I will give them an account of why I did what I did and today was the day for that. I bared my soul about my shameful past and my spirit poured out of me into the keyboard and in a frenzied manner, I typed out the essence of my life’s struggle up till the present age. I finished by 8:50 am, and with tear stains streaked across my cheeks, I sent the link to my friends. Soon replies and messages started to come in. My friends, they thanked me for sharing with them and basically gave encouraging responses to me. The estrangement was hopefully brought to a close and properly buried. More importantly, I felt I have dealt with an unspeakable difficulty in my life and that my life can now begin, I can now finally step into the light of my life with my past burden no longer a hindrance, but now providing me both fuel and direction for life. 

At service, tears flowed continuously, there were 2 services this morning, and by the end of service at 2 PM, my eyes were slightly blood shot and I probably look rather haggard and puffy eyed. The tears, they flowed at services because I couldn’t help but think of what I wrote and getting triggered by them. I do note however that not all the tears are of a good sorts. Yes, a part of tears are of sincere gratitude and repentance, but a part of them also are of a self-congratulatory type, prideful tears that I have become a saint and am now better than anyone. I had to struggle here and by the time the service is over, I had only little peace left, the devil and his magpies had robbed me of my spiritual fruits, the prideful part was winning. I was indulging in sentimentality as a glorification of my own saintliness.

 

Right after the service we had lunch at one of my estranged friend’s house. I felt now pride and disturbance in my soul. It spreaded across my field of being as a tension akin to exerting oneself against a heavy, immovable object. I felt as if I was wrestling with my friends, to submit them in order to receive some type of respectful deference that are due to me now that I did something heroic. But then I prayed, and with some wine, the tension subsided and gave way to something like a yielding humility, which settled my soul into a state of calm. I had this insight formed within me: let me not hanker for anything more, no more for myself for God will provide, let me here be of a kind presence to others, I felt I finally understood the foolishness of Pride, and how it’s completely worthless in the face of Godly peace. Soon the conversation flowed well, and we shed real tears about the past trauma in our lives.

 

Finally, night came, I sent a message to my elder brother about my confession, he responded encouragingly, my soul feels warm now, and during dinner time with the in-laws, we had a good surprise, my brother in law’s girl-friend joined us. We haven’t seen her in months, and I was very happy to see her, in a genuine way. I felt that all along, since I knew her about 10 years ago, I never had welcomed her into my heart. Tonight, it was different, I sincerely wanted to and could show her hospitality. After dinner, as we drove home, I felt a sense that the true riches in life do not require money, a fleeting “moment of clarity” if you will, in a world of material intoxication.  

Soon the night came to an end, I had some bickering with my son about sleeping time, and lost the peace again within me. I was reminded after all the lofty hubbub within my soul through the weekend, that I had perhaps neglected my basic responsibility as a dad, to guide my son well spiritually. It reminded me that spiritual development happens in both the realm of ineffable, infinite and eternal but also in the tangible here and now, within the day-to-day task that God has given to us to dutifully execute without grumbling.

 

And so marked the end of this strange weekend journey of my soul across an oceanic expanse worth of spiritual experiences. I will end this writing now.

May God bless you the reader of this post...

P/S: Writing this blog post has been a painful experience for me, as it's produced a lot of vain glorious thoughts and feelings within me. Causing me to edit and overworking the sentences in desperate worry that the words are coming across as bland/convoluted/uninteresting etc. May God deliver me from this affliction..

My struggle with the passions

Today is end of the 5th week of Lent, and in the tradition of the Orthodox Church, we venerates Saint Mary of Egypt to mark off the occasion. To those unfamiliar and interested, Saint Mary of Egypt's personal story is one of the overcoming sexual passions. You can google her story on internet, there will be no short amount of material available.

In memory of the Venerable Mary, I thought that I too will write a personal reflection of my own struggles with sexual sins for the purpose of humbling myself and for the edification of whoever happens to read this. God knows that more men should speak up on such matter and may He strengthen me to write as honest and clear an account I can.   

My story... 

Something bad happened to me when I turned 13, I stumbled unto pornography. It happened the year I started going to high school, my best friend at the time invited me and a bunch of other friends over to watch a 'tape' that he had come into possession. We locked ourselves in his uncle's house, which was empty at the time, and together we watched a man and a woman have sex on screen and sinning against God and themselves. For many of us, it was the first time we watched something like that, I recalled feeling sick in my stomach and couldn't eat properly that night... Afterwards, in usual youthful bravado, we made a joke out of 'watching' event, but really what happened that day was bad, we wounded our souls, and our bodies and heart could feel it even if our minds were not aware of what has happened.    

This momentous event, it marked the beginning of my downfall and devolution from a human being into an animal. Very soon, pornography took possession of my soul and I started down a rabbit hole of pornographic indulgence. As a child of the 1980s, I turned into an adolescent around the middle 90s, the time when the internet started to become main-stream. This is not a good time to be a teenager who has the time and urge to consume pornographic materials. By the time I was 17, 4 short years after being introduced to pornography, I was totally enslaved to my sexual passions, yet at the time I didn't even realize this was the case. After all everyone was watching porn, after all it's just watching people having fun. Along with watching porn, I also developed a whole raft of sexual urges and fetishes, some of which, in their demand to be satiated, cause me to act lewdly around girls. I suspect that I would have continued to spiral and who knows, maybe even become a sex criminal if not for another momentous event which happened to me the year I turned 18, right after completing my final high school exam (SPM). In this time, when we should be enjoying the bloom of our youth and nursing good hope for future, my conscience instead awoke to the horror of what I become and started persecuting and crucifying me. 

It happened like this...

One day, me and my high school friends went to a coffee shop for breakfast. I was sitting opposite a girl, and she said in an off handed and joking way 'Why is your smile so yam jin (perverted)'. Somehow this innocent and off-handed comment turned out to be the last straw that allowed me conscience to broke through to me. For some reason I felt extremely disturbed by this comment, and the moment I went back home after breakfast, I went up to the mirror and flashed the most perverted smile I can to the mirror. Indeed, what stared back was not human, it was evil, it was animalistic, my soul quavered in horror, I have turned into an evil animal and I didn't know what to do about it. 

Quickly, I tried to forget this bad incident, but to no avail, my conscience had awoke and it would not go back to sleep until I have atoned for my sins. Slowly, under the weight of the persecution of my conscience, I slowly withered psychologically, socially then physically. Back then, up till age 17, I was a warm person, someone who was basically the class clown that could bring laughter and amusement to everyone I met. I remembered distinctly how at a late night tea session, I could put a slightly shy girl at ease with my presence, I felt at the time a warm glow in my heart, that I was a human soul knitted together with other human souls. 

The revelation however of my sins and of my fallen self, it changed all that and rewired my personality in a fundamental way... By the time I was 20+, abroad in UK pursuing a degree, I became hyper self conscious, I couldn't smile naturally as I felt it reveals to others the evil animal that I was. When I did have to smile, fear would shoot through my nervous system, and I would imagine that I was flashing up a half frozen grin. This cause me great anguish, and as my social relations started to fray and dwindle, my pornography consumption continued unabated. In fact, it became a solace for my loneliness in life. In my 20s, I contemplate running away to Brazil, living a frenzied life and then committing suicide there, such was the despair within me. Of course, things were not all bad, when I do return to my home country, sometimes things would lighten up for me more. My high school friends, they were a great solace to me during the time, and we hanged out and did silly stuff together. In fact one did even came to stay with me in UK for a couple of years (as he came to study at the same University), who knows if I would have committed suicide if not for him. 

So thus, I passed most of my 20s in some sort an anguish intermix with momentary respite either from friends or alcohol. This continued on until my late 20s when something momentous happened to me again... I met my wife, the human savior of my life whom God put into my life. Here I begin the slow process of re-learning and re-believing that I am a human being worthy of love and worthy to give love. We started a relationship, forged it through my PhD years away from my home country and eventually got married and had a son. My sexual bad habits stayed with me, and I was not entirely free of my sins before or while in my marriage, but as with age also comes more temperance and it became much less. Nevertheless, I still couldn't smile properly, I fear that it reveals my true nature. 

One thing to note. The night I got married, an instinct came over me, I needed to leave my past behind, completely. I need to be a new person. I didn't know how to do it at the time, and I thought the way to do this, was to leave all I know behind. I made a commitment, to no longer have any association with any of the things in the past that would remind me of my shameful history. I started cutting ties with my high school friends and felt like this was the only way I could move forward. Now I know this was not the solution. 

The solution, it started to come... the years I turned 35-36.

In these years, I started to encounter Christ in my life, in a way which touches the heart. Up till then, I was a scientific atheist, and considered God to be a human delusion, and that my salvation depends entirely on me to stop the thoughts that I am an evil animal, either through some self-help methods or through some of the Buddhist psycho-therapy. This started to change when I encountered the lectures of Jordan Peterson online. His earnest lectures on the Bible managed to reach into a deep part of my soul, and were able to convinced me that God is perhaps not unreal. Soon, this trickle of an awareness grew, and I started to search for answers to the problem of why I was an evil animal through the Christian route. At age 36, I had another powerful encounter with the Christian Triune God through the writings of Dostoyevsky, in particular his work "The Brother Karamazov". This work, it showed me a vision of the greatness and loftiness of Christian goodness through the character of Aloysha Karamazov, I wept when I finally completed the book. It made me subconsciously resolve to find my answers through Christ and I started attending the Methodist churches under the semi-true semi-false pre-text of having to find a safe harbor for my son.

Then another momentous event hit my life and the lives of others in general. Covid-19 happened, and we were all grounded in our houses. This disrupted my church going activity, and by the time the lockdowns were lifted, my son had refuse to go to Church, and I stopped with him, believing that I am in a semi-OK state of not sinning as much, so maybe don't need God anymore. Nevertheless, I still couldn't smile properly, but I had at this point made progress here, having already confessed this problem to my wife. In my worldly life, I continue to struggled at career, in loving and raising my son, in making sure my broader family were OK. Things were OK, passable, not like in my college years were I felt like dying, my wife's love was for me, it was a great unspeakable solace, she is God's true gift for me. But as much as I was granted this undeserving gifts, something persisted in me along with my broken smile. At the background, I am always doubting things, what is the point of life ? Is this a cruel joke ? Why am I given at this animal body and then told not to use it like an animal. Why I am semi anguished. Why don't I have any real friends beyond my wife?

All this question persisted in me until I turned 40, when another momentous thing occurred in my life. God brought me back to Church, but this time not the Methodist Church, but the Church which spoke deeply to me, the Church whose one of her sons, the writer Dostoevsky revealed to me the possibility of human dignity, the Orthodox Church. God brought me back by putting online reading materials and Christian friends in my life to prompt me about my understanding and commitment to the faith. Under this guidance, I found myself back at Church, attending the regular Sunday services. Slowly the Orthodox Church began to reform me as a person, first as a catechist then as a baptized convert. I stopped watching porn entirely when I started going Church service regularly as a catechist, but things really started to really come into place after my baptism, where I was now able to participate in the Sacred Communions offered by the Church. Through this, God's grace started to flow into me more rapidly, and revealed to me how I can through prayers and communion rid myself of other sins which has gathered around my mind/heart/soul. Soon, I could see others patterns of thought and behavior within me that were evil and animalistic, and I had the power of Communion and prayer to be rid of them and persecute them, to bring them under dominion instead of being dominated by them. I was am now healing, I am recovering my humanity... 

During this Great Lent season, I feel the pace of healing has picked up more rapidly, and my soul has more moments where it is at peace. My heart radiates a low indistinct warmth that somehow feels like the presence of the Holy Spirit. My mind, while it still veers and jumps, and is still used relentlessly by the Spirts of the Passion to entice me to sin, I am now much more able to fight this battle, to control and discipline it and persecute the bad thoughts through prayers. My relationships, they are mending, I can feel love for others more. I believe in Love, a word only approximately used to describing and trying to capture something ineffable and infinite. I can appreciate the manifestation of Love, when people show glimpses of it to each others, these make me wants to fall down and weep sometimes (but it also makes me want to show-off in search of vainglorious praises)...

I don't know where this Christian life will take me further, but I would not trade what I have now for anything in the world I suppose. Not the 27 years of living like an animal, not the suicidal periods of my life. Anyway, I need to bring this to an end as it is 8:50 and I will need to go met the Triune God at Church...  May this writing be of edification to those who read it.. And to my high school friends, I would like to apologies to you all. Mostly, I wrote this for you all.